The Barack Obama who was on display in ABC News' Wednesday night special on healthcare reform was a man whom we've all come to know quite well during his six-month presidency.

Obama was calm, reassuring and fluent with issues ranging from "doughnut holes" – he was referring to a gap in Medicare drug coverage, not something you get at Krispy Kreme – to the delicate matter of what to do with a healthy 99-year-old woman who needs a pacemaker.

Yet as I sat in front of my television for an hour and a half, it struck me that Obama, through his media omnipresence and his seeming mastery of the details (in truth, much of what he said on Wednesday amounted to well-crafted sloganeering), is treading on risky political terrain.

Consider what we've witnessed in the short time since Obama assumed office.

He has lectured us repeatedly on the economy, with a mastery of policy nuances that has no recent parallels, with the possible exception of Bill Clinton.

Earlier this month, in Cairo, Egypt Obama delivered a memorable address to the Muslim world, interspersing his remarks with a few snippets of Arabic and pronouncing "Qur'an" with an authentic-sounding rolling "R".

The danger Obama faces is that it may start to seem like all too much. Yes, a jolt of charismatic, forceful leadership can be enormously helpful to getting things done. But when the president is always with us, it can be awfully hard to get worked up about yet another Obama television appearance. And his constant displays of expertise in everything from economics to automotive engineering, from how to pronounce "Qur'an" to how care for cancer patients, puts the focus on him in ways that may ultimately prove damaging.

Not that the benighted presidency of George Bush has much to teach Obama. But it is instructive that, last year, when the financial system went into meltdown, the deeply unpopular Bush smartly hid himself away and let his treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, and the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, take the public stage. Their presence was far more reassuring than Bush's would have been, and Bush knew it.

Though Obama, unlike Bush, is his own best spokesman, he risks overdrawing his account, wearing us down through his sheer Obamaness. Unless Wednesday night's programme sparks an unexpected flood of phone calls to the Capitol, you can be reasonably sure that the president's bravura performance inspired more resentment than respect among the congressional fossils who are responsible for actually drafting a healthcare bill.

The ABC special came during a week when Obama's press operation is starting to get some pushback from a resentful Washington media corps, as well as from conservatives and their allies at Fox News.

A group called the Congressional Media Fairness Caucus, chaired by Republican congressman Lamar Smith of Texas, sent a letter to ABC News president David Westin on Monday charging the special, combined with a separate morning interview with Michelle Obama, was "unprofessional and contrary to the journalistic code of ethics", noting there would be no Republicans included in the forum, and no opposing advocacy ads during the commercial breaks.

Westin responded by promising "a thoughtful, respectful and probing discussion" and by defending his network against charges of bias. Fox News posted a story on its website criticising ABC and quoting Republican senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina as saying that Democrats would "use all kinds of blackmail and extortion" to get healthcare passed. (As it turned out, that wasn't even remotely the most ridiculous thing said by a South Carolina Republican recently.) And the rightwing teabaggers held rallies here and there outside the buildings of ABC affiliates.

Then there was the matter of the Huffington Post's Nico Pitney, whom Obama called on at his contentious Tuesday news conference so that Pitney could ask a question from an Iranian citizen that he'd culled from the internet. It was a case of stagecraft pushed too far, and the White House press operation would be well advised not to repeat it.

But Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank ratcheted things up with a disingenuous piece in which he hinted, if not quite asserted, that Obama knew the question ahead of time, and that Pitney had been promised he'd get a chance to ask his question. (According to Pitney: no and no.)

In isolation, his healthcare forum was a brilliant move – a chance to educate a public that is still enthralled with its new president and to frame the issues the way he wants.

Cumulatively, though, it may have been a mistake. At some point, something's going to happen, and his popularity is bound to slip by a lot more than the blip recorded recently. When that happens, he may wish he'd been a bit more reticent in the early months of his presidency, saving at least some of his rhetorical firepower for times when he really needed it.